A Look Back at Grumpy Jii-san's Anime Reviews

"Because an old man can watch cartoons too."

I can't tell you why, but I recently thought back to Grumpy Jii-san: a somewhat older gentleman with an almost Santa Claus-like beard that stops to review anime while hiking through the Arizona mountains. It might seem like an unlikely premise for a Youtube channel, but trust me when I say that it's absolutely awesome. Let's look through a handful of examples!

Here's a look at Jojo's Bizarre Adventure on freakin' LaserDisc.

This time around he tackles Gainax's Gunbuster.

With this review of Appleseed Ex Machina, Jii-san showed he could also appreciate newer titles.

Toei's 3x3 Eyes OVA series are spotlighted here.

Finally, here's an overview of the classic Galaxy Express 999.

There are many more titles featured among Jii-san's uploads. I imagine the videos could have been more popular if they weren't all named with puns, but that simply provided another layer of charm. The channel hasn't been active in a few years, but Jii-san did a great job of sharing his passion for anime during its tenure.

While the initial hook might be the possibly ageist amusement of seeing someone outside of anime's "target demographic" talking about it out in the middle of nowhere, the reviews were all very well-informed and nicely put together. Each video contains background and availability information, a nice array of footage to help you gauge your own interest, and a fair assessment of the title as a whole. It's too bad that the channel is inactive now, but the existing Grumpy Jii-san archive is well worth checking out.

Yep. CGS can get nostalgic about just about anything. Until next time, feel free to follow and like on Twitter & Facebook!